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Friday, 27 December 2013

A Pre Note From Aaron - So I have no idea what Harvey's Christmas article is about, but I assume it'll be very down on Christmas. As such to contradict him here is my tiny black Christmas tree I dig out every year, my miniature Nature's Prophet Plushie and literally the WaC site wishing you a very Merry Christmas. Thanks for your continued support in spite of our very poor release schedule, hope you got everything you wanted <3

And so another
Christmas has reared its annoying, greedy, stupid, but slightly
appreciated head for another year. Outside of being forced to take part in Christmas, mostly I'm happy that our viewers continue to check in enough that I get to write a second one of these and that writing for the site remains enjoyable without going completely ignored.

But back to it. The lead up to Christmas is a lot
like life. You spend the entire time being tested with repetitive conversations about what you're up to and things you've bought, listening to bad music, buying
endless trash that won't bring anyone any form of joy and then at the
end of it all are left with only a memory of an event that was at
best, slightly above average.

The only thing that I
really appreciated this year about getting older and so finding
Christmas increasingly disappointing is the fact that I now seem to
be over the hump of at least the disappointment being a surprise now.
Having purged any expectation that I will be receiving the gifts that
I so happily absorbed like the greedy present grabbing shit stain that I
once was, when I was weaker willed and spoilt by the day, I can now
go in expecting just a catch up with some family I haven't seen in a
while and then the inevitable cocks versus cunts edition of trivial
pursuit which breaks out once everyone but me is suitably drunk
enough because the thought of freely driving home at the end of all
this is enough to avoid the sedation of alcohol.

Tuesday, 24 December 2013

Adverts are supposed to
deliver us striking images in order to get us to buy their things.
The images they show however, for reasons that I'm sure stems from
the steady self destruction of the modern attention span, are
becoming increasingly irrelevant to the product that they're trying
to sell. Advertising worries me even further because I imagine that
the people in charge of making these have done some sort of
psychological experiments and come to the conclusion that the human
mind is most effectively sold the idea of going to buy meaningless
household items from John Lewis by watching a short animated film
about a tired bear and an overly emotional hair to a cover song by
Lilly Allen.

Personally I didn't
think my mind worked that way but John Lewis has given me and
everyone else in England a psyche exam, of which the results prove
that we are consumerist emotional wrecks.

Monday, 23 December 2013

Having just got back from The Hobbit 2: Desolation of Smaug, I feel three things.

A great sense of relief this film isn't bad

Slightly dizzy

A strong hope the people in charge of pacing weren't paid well.

(Warning, will contain spoilers...If anyone doesn't know the plot to the Hobbit at this point)

So yeah, as you can tell, I liked it, it was good, maybe even great. Unfortunately I now need to launch into the inevitable comparison between it and the Lord of the Rings trilogy of 12 years ago, and that seems to make every reviewer look like they are backtracking on their opinions.

As I stated in my Films of the Year: 2012 awards I really dig the concept of these three Hobbit films. A 9 hour walk around one of my favourite children's books and one of the richest mythologies in Fantasy all with a really good budget off the back of what was ostensibly the 2000s Star Wars ( in place of actual Star Wars). That sounds incredible, and indulgent...Incredibly indulgent. And where that is great for the child who loves Tolkien in me, I have some trouble reconciling that with the Film Critic in me.

Wednesday, 18 December 2013

Hey everybody, Poetry corner is back now that my brain isn't being sapped for every syllable it can think of by the pesky Ottoman Empire. That also means that you get two separate pieces of my terrible rhymes from out and about. Big one first, little one after the jump. And yes, they are *****mas based, I'm very sorry.

Garfield probably made me think I was a cat person for a whole 2 years more.

Monday, 16 December 2013

And I'm back, that took way too long, and way too much effort. But now it is the holidays, so my article output should increase, and hopefully the quality to boot. Though this article is actually just about how terrible British culture seems to be, so perhaps the promise of a quality increase is foolish. I'll need a few days to actually do things I enjoy though before I can start talking about that instead. Poem is up tomorrow, hold me to it.

Pictured, the famed "Vodka Revolution", colloquially known as Vodka Revz.

Universally acknowledged to be meh.

So I think it can go without saying at this point that my enthusiasm for taking part in what can be called "standard university life" is pretty limited without significant intervention from my friends. Getting me to part with £20 to go for a Christmas Dinner at "Vodka Revolution" with History Society followed by clubbing however was surprisingly easy given how utterly weak that sounds. The primary reason was that I had been working for about 10 days straight at the point I was asked. My mental state was probably compromised, leading me to think that I was finally experiencing the university lifestyle and should consequently attempt the end of term party blow-out again.

I'm not actually sure if I was wrong, I'll spoil the article slightly by prefacing that I actually had an alright time, significantly better than I expected when I had finished the essays and then realised what I had signed myself up for. But some aspects of it were still...interesting, so lets do this.

Monday, 9 December 2013

Given the name of the website I don't
often like to publish things here that are not in some way critical.
Obviously there is another fine line between cynicism with a point,
and then cynicism for cynicism's sake, which must also be taken into
account. After all, criticising is unfortunately a very short walk
away from whining and avoiding mindlessly throwing rocks at anything
that annoys you is tricky. That separation can fall away at any point
if you're not careful you can end up an endless drawl of mindless
complaining that will lose its impact if not kept in check simply for
the sake of content. An amassing of content that is not only
meaningless but also wouldn't be in-keeping with the long standing
tradition of infrequent updates that both us and our readers have
come to enjoy.

That is the overall philosophy of the
website in general anyway. I'm only defining it to demonstrate that
this is usually the staus quo of what posts should adhere. Going
against all of that of course, I'm now going to do the complete
opposite of everything I just said. You can't always be cynical about
things, although obviously it will always be easier to hate than to
appreciate. That was just demonstrated to me now by the fact that the
rhyme in the previous sentence made me annoyed and doubly so because
I couldn't think of a better word than appreciate to replace it with,
so I'm forced to leave it in there.

At one particularly boring Christmas
with my family, of the many which there have been many, one member of
my family began to complain that they hated Les Miserable the play,
not for any valid or non ridiculous reason, but instead simply
because it was too depressing and that everyone should “just
lighten up”. Although I didn't think their corrections for a
musical set against the backdrop of a bleak and ultimately failed
French revolution wasn't mind numbingly stupid in every way, it did
make me see that maybe, just maybe we should all just relax and be
happy once in a while.

So this is my version of being happy.
Today, in the wake of the release and my experiences with Assassins
Creed 4: Black Flags, I'm going to give an analysis of the Assassin's
Creed series. My analysis will be split up into several pieces, each
segment looking at one of the major console release titles in the
series. I'm doing this because I don't think there's enough criticism
and analysis of video games in the same way that there is books and
films and other mediums of art. I also do this because I genuinely
believe that the Assassin's Creed franchise is a genuine
accomplishment in the medium that should be praised for what it
managed to bring to the table by its achievements in terms of
narrative, aesthetic brilliance, solid gameplay and ultimately what a
shame it is that it never managed to reach the levels of greatness
that its earlier instalments seemed to promise.

I also apologise for the length, but I wanted to make this full on. Then again you can stop reading at any time so feel free to do that also.

Thursday, 5 December 2013

How very suspicious Sony. How very
coincidental that on the day of the PS4's release in Europe my PS3
just happens to break. Never once before has it had a problem and now
look at this, all blinking and flashing its yellow light at me; a
vague warning to its owner that the something has gone wrong with the
console. Not that I needed a stupid little yellow light to tell me
that since just not working in general would have been enough of a
warning. I can't fix you PS3, stop trying to explain to me what's
wrong with you. I cannot help.

Tuesday, 3 December 2013

Smoking is quickly becoming the most
elaborate past time. What was once a simple exercise in getting your
death sticks out, setting fire to them and then puffing away wherever
the hell you pleased, has now turned into a tedious, and now with it
being winter, incredibly cold event as you stand outside of the pub
that you were warm and socialising in a few short minutes ago, but
have now decided to replace that friendship and comfort with burning
lungs, shivering and an increasing chance of certain death. Not that
you are able to even care about any of this since you're also getting
your delicious injection of nicotine that is clouding your brain into
thinking happy thoughts in what is clearly a not so happy situation.

You wouldn't put yourself through this
for most other things. If I offered people a delicious pie or simply
to watch me play the Playstation 6 (if I was a time traveller), but
on the condition that they had to come outside into the freezing
night air to receive their prize, most if not all people would tell
me to either bring it inside or simply shrug me off as a jackass for
putting myself through such a struggle. But offer someone a little
drag of sweet nicotine and they'll accept the same tedium without a
care in the world.

Thursday, 28 November 2013

Hey everybody, I feel I should start off by apologising, turns out everything hit both of us at the worst time. As you are aware my internet broke down last week, that on-top of another severe bout of illness and my frankly ridiculous submission deadlines for my final year of University meant that posting became unfeasible. Unfortunately, the person I was relying on to take up the slack, Harvey, as far as I can ascertain (communications have been so bad I have no idea if he even has a PS4 yet), has also become as ill, if not more so than myself, hence his disappearance also. I have literally just finished one essay and I have this day to do stuff before the next one begins, so here is my article. Thankfully, I'll be finished on December 12th and hopefully this illness will have gone long, long before that.

(I'll get to general admin later tonight around the site)
((safe to say I'm on painkillers so forgive me if I don't make sense? I read it through, seems okay, I don't trust myself currently))

I know the article consistent around here is something of a running joke, but even for us I deem this time period to have been too long, and for that I'm sorry, I will try to make sure it doesn't happen again. Anyway, onto cheerier things...Technology.

I've wanted to use this picture for ages, as a technophile I like it, as a Historian I love it.

So yes, when faced with what to right my latest article about, bearing in mind that my activities over these past few weeks have been, in order of regularity Essay Writing, Dry Heaving and trying to work out my new phone...I decided that the most interesting of those potential articles by a long shot was the phone. So get ready for the worlds worst tech review of....

Wednesday, 20 November 2013

So if you are reading this, my impeccable plan of uploading this using another persons internet has worked out and I'll have successfully uploaded this. If not I can write whatever the fuck I want here, so there is always that. To briefly surmise my internet situation. Old Victorian House = Internet Cables get wet = Internet fucks up = Aaron has to do lots of wiring and dig out the old volt'o'meter. So here is a parody of those omnipresent lists people make based on my experiences of being Internetless for the past half a week.

(I'll reply to comments when I have a stable connection at my house, so as to not waste his time)
((Assume passively I was thinking about Dota the entire time))

5: Gain a new found appreciation of your Mobile Phone!

This one is slightly cheating because it is basically a variation of the "I'd wish for more wishes" in the equivalent Magic Lamp scenario. What do you do without the internet? Desperately use any means necessary to connect to the internet of course. You want to know what helped me redefine patience. Using countryside phone coverage to browse Twitter at night. I could barely even enjoy popular comedians talk about inane shit knowing that eventually I'd have to wait for 5 minutes for it to download another 10 tweets.

Thankfully, trying to access the internet via phone was the activity I spent the least amount of time on during this (un)eventful period as I quickly realised I only like the internet when it is fast, convenient and on a big screen. Otherwise it can really go do one. I think this was an impressive breakthrough in my overall development as a human being.

Tuesday, 19 November 2013

So I was driving home from work the
previous Monday and was forced to listen to Radio 2. There were several
reasons for this and I also have more reasons for why I don't really
like radio, so don't stop reading yet because I assure you this is
going to get in depth and so obviously more interesting.

With no CDs in the car and my MP3
player dead to me without its auxiliary jack so that it could play
through the speaker system, I was truly in the depths of a first
world crisis. How was I ever going to drown out my own nagging
thoughts, which I had to be stuck with throughout my work day as they
incessantly pile-drived me with accusations that “You're wasting
you're life you know” and “when are you ever going to get off
your ass and actually finish something that you start instead of just
constantly lying to people that the reason you've never gotten round
to actually writing anything of more worth than an internet article
is because of formatting issues and plot details that need to be
worked out, very complicated stuff, when really it's anything but and
you're just a lazy piece of shit who prefers to live in the fantasy
realm of his own imagination rather than actually take a risk and put
any of that into practise”. Then my brain went on to tell me I had
a small dick and that I wouldn't make it to the shops quick enough to
get tomatoes, just to kick me when I'm down.

Thursday, 14 November 2013

AI companions in games are usually a
heavy dose of ketamine to the head for most games. Sometimes they are
unresponsive, sometimes they get in the way, sometimes they get you
spotted and others are just plain bad characters. But it takes a
special kind of nihilism to manage to instil all of these qualities
into one single character, but magnified to the point where you can
no longer tell whether you're playing a game that you chose to spend
money on or just some sick social experiment where you are hopelessly
attempting to escape some hellish digital maze which has had the
sensation of being relentlessly stalked by the virtual equivalent of
a hot razor blade grinding away at your sanity programmed into it by
some long forgotten madman in a pit somewhere whose only thoughts
comprise of the endless suffering of all humanity and a strange
desire to eat the eyes right out of his own head.

In this small series we will be examining the AI companions who managed to turn an already shitty game, into a truly unbearable one. However, if there are any main game protagonists who manage to be so grating that the even at the cost of failing the game, the prize of purposely killing them is reward enough, then I might also check them out as well. I would've included 50 Cent from 50 Cent Blood on The Sand in this, but he exists in real life so I thought that wouldn't count as much. That game's more of a biopic. Apparently.

I therefore present to you one of
gaming's greatest arseholes, and by extension anyone who played a
part in his creation; Tricky of Starfox Adventures for the Gamecube.

Monday, 11 November 2013

I think it's just about time for a review. Finally something that not everyone hated. Here's something positive here for once. It's not exactly a cutting edge review since we saw it in the UK and it seems to have come out in every other country in the world before here, meaning that it's even more pointless than usual. But if it convinces any new people to go and watch this film instead of Thor 2, then I'll feel as if we've done a service.

Apologies for the lack of badly edited picture for the background. Just couldn't find anything circular to dump an inappropriate face onto in any of Gravity's posters.

Recently I had to go on
a speeding awareness course for the obvious reason that I was caught speeding.
If I had gone for any other reason other than being forced to under
threat of half losing my dawn years worth of driving licence then I
would clearly be insane because, as I will go into, these things are
more dull than a death of incontinent old age in a nursing home could
ever muster.

Why was I speeding?
Well I could give you many reasons. Firstly, in all fairness it was
two in the morning, on an empty dual carriage way, with no pavement
and I was only going at 34 mph in a 30 mile an hour zone. But those
reasons aside, at it's core it's literally because I'm an asshole and
don't really give a shit and believe that my self control of my car
will save me in dire times. Although at the time I was also pretty
damn tired and sick of driving so maybe my self confidence was
slightly undeserved. And yes I've seen all the THINK adverts both on
TV and giant billboards that warn me of the consequences of my
actions. But it's at the point now where I've been so banged over the
head with the warnings that I immediately skim over any of the
billboards that don't look like they're about upcoming films and any time I
see the little girl getting hit at 40 miles an hour and being left as
a lifeless corpse on the side of the road I'm usually either
concentrating on eating a sandwich or just fast forwarding.

Thursday, 7 November 2013

There are somethings you expect never to have to write about, one of them for me, even without my knowledge, was an article on a Microsoft mascot who always happened to be an anime magic girl for the default Windows browser Internet explorer. But hey, time makes fools of us all, and I'm now about to post beneath this very paragraph the (pretty excellently) animated two minute battle video charting the struggles of one Inori Aizawa. After that, I'll try and explain the thinking behind it...If there was any.

As I said, very pretty, nice music as well, reminded me of Rusty Hearts.

(Oh yeah, before I continue, Poetry corner is delayed because of an imposing essay on French Communism I've been neglected. Also, yes, the rumours are true, Star Wars auditions are being held in Bristol, and yes, I will be trying out, and yes, mainly to try get JJ Abram's ear to not direct another Star Wars movie: Might be an article later in the week, anyway, topic at hand).

So yeah, I'm a self admitted anime fan, so I guess I should be the most receptive of Western audiences to this...and I don't really get it. The premise is that the magic girl transformation scene we see (complete with implied nudity, 10 points for sticking to source material) is symbolic of the transformation of Internet Explorer from the buggy piece of shit that we all know and hate, to something cool, streamlined and apparently cutesy as hell.

Sunday, 3 November 2013

I think my ratio between games I buy
because they're terrible to games I buy for actual enjoyment is
getting too expansive. Aside from major releases most of the games I
buy are the second hand shits of yesteryear that I avoided when they
were at full price. Now that they are cheaper and in great supply
since they're usually the first things to be traded in from someone's
collection, there is no end to the number of self torture that is
purchasable for under a fiver. This week I bought 50 Cent: Blood On
The Sand, the second in what I imagine will become the 50 Cent
trilogy if any major publisher inevitably loses all sense of self
respect and buys the rights from the now defunct THQ in order to get
in on the cash grab.

Friday, 1 November 2013

Welcome to the What About Cynics Halloween Special Review. I tried to think of the most terrifying thing for a media and culture site and I worked out that it would probably be...Communism! So without further ado I will be reviewing Papers, Please. The most polite tyrannical dystopian game you've probably ever witnessed. (Ok, so "maybe" I was going to review "Vampire: Bloodlines" and "maybe" that video will take another 400 minutes to load, so "maybe" this won't be very spooky at all)

But first, for something truly horrifying. A video of me playing Papers, Please. Cue thunder and lightning. Alright, see you after the page split.

Wednesday, 30 October 2013

Everyone knows Windows
8 is bad. Its sole purpose is to turn your PC into a giant phone just
so that Microsoft can connect their phone and PC platforms into one
big happy synchronised family. How charming. Charming and damn
irritating.

Unless you have a touch
screen or are just retarded and like tile displays, then it won't be
such a problem. But if you have a PC with its many hundreds of
applications and files that you want to have quick and easy access to
without having to go through a river of friendly and boiled down hand
holding software that makes it ironically more difficult to do anything
that is out of the understanding of some twat whose only necessary
input with his device is to smack his hand drunkenly across the
screen and scroll through his collection of apps that range in
complexity from angry birds all the way to angry birds space. Apps
are programs Microsoft. Stop separating them. They're just different
names for the same things, much in the way that I would use the words
Windows 8 and inexplicable.

Sunday, 27 October 2013

Long one this week, perhaps this is my inner-essayist begging to be freed. Either way, sorry this was a long time coming, I blame it largely on illness and uni. I've got quite a lot of essays incoming as well, but now with the video shift I think I'll be able to keep my flow of both articles and videos quite steady, providing I don't get ill. Also, as those in England know, apparently the mother of all storms is coming. So I'm wishing everyone luck.

Also, I've just purchased an old nostalgic game on the back of Harvey's Harry Potter article, prepare yourselves.

It is hard to believe when I came here.
This town numbered 4 or 5.
When I walk the lit streets at night,
it just feels so alive.

But now winter has arrived.
And my harvest may have stalled
but with the town around my table
it is hard not to feel enthralled.

The mayor sits besides me.
He knew my parents well.
It was his restoration plan
that made our numbers swell.

If you've read any of my recent
previous stuff then you may notice this is slightly similar to my
last article. If you've never read anything I've ever written before,
then welcome and please ignore the first line because I can assure
you, it's only ever original content that gets published here.

What I wrote earlier was about games
that I had recently played from the Playstation One days, which I
hadn't already played before and seeing without the rose tinted specs
whether they were genuinely good or just plain frustrating. I found
that quite a lot of my experience was pretty annoying and I try to go
from just my boredom from a gameplay and story standpoint, rather
than a graphical criticism since it was the past and it would be
unfair to attack things like that as the technology obviously
couldn't compete at the time.

It just so happens that recently I went on a PS1 buying binge because like most people I stupidly thought buying shit would make me feel as if my life would be more complete. It isn't, but form this mistake there'll be some reviews of some potentially shitty PS1 games that I've never played before.

The game today is 'Harry Potter and The
Chamber of Secrets', a game which I began to play normally but gave
up on during the point where the audio from one of the characters
began endlessly repeated for five minutes during an extended flying
car running away from train sequence. It was after this point that I
played the rest of this 4 hour adventure with a pretty constant level
of alcohol in my system.

So this was originally suppose to be a double announcement, but apparently it is going to take another 524 minutes to upload the video I am uploading to Youtube ( Aaron finally edited and uploaded his own video, that is an announcement in itself, so the article on that will have to wait as I promised this would be up on the Saturday. So yeah, my computer will be hot tomorrow morning.

The price of glorious HD. Hopefully worth it. (Click to enlarge etc)

I suppose that image sort of gives away what it will be about, but I'll put an article (that you are free to ignore) when it is done to explain my reasoning. Also, not every video I'll be making will revolve around the game that should not be named. I'm planning to do commentary playthroughs of such latest indie hit Papers, Please, top down neon-emblazoned beat-em-up Hotlline Miami and if you are really lucky, me struggling to play Football Manager 2013.

Saturday, 26 October 2013

So in-lieu of my outrage article about the Totalbiscuit scandal which was resolved earlier in the week, thankfully by "Wild Games Studio" caving to overwhelming pressure and a truly awful metacritic onslaught, I'm going to brighten your Friday with a funny tale from the continent and my beloved European Union. Because hey, I'd be a terrible liberal (Read: go insane) if I couldn't poke fun at the institutions I love.

For all those interested in Youtuber's legal standing. Go watch.

(This story actually won out against the whole "Jackie Chan is misquoted as being really anti-Japanese" thing. Read into that what you will)

So pictured below is completely unassuming smiley Romanian Member of the European Parliament Dumitri Zamfirescu. What makes him unique and worth talking about? Well, he really hates saying no to things. The political version of Jim Carey's Yes Man, Mister Zamfirescu (a name I'm glad I only have to type) continually votes either yes or an abstain. Sure, this might be fine, it could just be the wording of the questions, perhaps he is a real social revolutionary who wants continuous, unending change? Well, lets find out.

Tuesday, 22 October 2013

(Hey, Poem early this week, sorry for all the delays, University deadlines and illness really haven't been in my favour. On the other hand, both have meant plenty of time to play Harvest Moon: A New Beginning, so here we go, the first Cynics article written from bed)

Ok, so before we begin, disclaimer time. I'm still a big Pokémon fan, and I'm talking post-generation 1, 2 and 3. I can detail you the Vanilluxe evolution line, I know Sinnoh and Unova as well as I know Johto and Kanto, I currently have caught 626 pokemon on White/2, roughly 400 more than most of my peers have a right to exist. So it isn't like I'm in the vocal majority of our generation who only played Generation 1, 2 and perhaps 3, I've stayed with Pokémon through its unpopular decline of the mid to late 2000s, too its weird revival at the end of and now continuing. I even followed the release of X and Y closely, as you may well know if you go on this site.

And yet here I am, 8 days after worldwide release date, it isn't in my 3DS, I haven't even purchased it, I probably won't until around Christmas time. What is in there instead? You guessed it, Harvest Moon: A New Beginning, a critically ignored, and frankly excellent game. Sadly, in a series I'm worried might soon cease being released outside Japan, so prepare for one of those "I appeal to you to give X a chance" articles. But it'll be fun along the way, games journalism on farming games always is.

Wednesday, 16 October 2013

It had been a long day.
A day long and dull enough at work that I could be very annoyed at
having gotten out of bed that morning, but frustratingly not bad
enough that I could really complain about it, since it was hard by
first world standards and I hadn't been digging silver out of a
collapsing mine or anything lasting enough to harp on about. Even as
I was driving home I was filled with even more hopelessness from
outside of my own sphere of existence when I saw a shop that was a
combination between a gambling slots casino and a Quick Tan tanning
salon. Both of which were open until 2am every day. I couldn't work
out who would want a tan at 2am, but also sadly knew there was
business for it and it put me into a slump of numbness for the rest
of the journey home.

Thursday, 10 October 2013

We are going to take a break from Dogging, Pornography and GTA to focus on the simpler joys in life.

Back in the dim and distant September when the weather was...actually worse than it is currently, everyone was getting very keen about one Grand Theft Auto V, and it was in that week another game was released, a game I had pre-ordered, a simple game about farming, raising livestock and rebuilding your hometown. Harvest Moon: A New Beginning.

Harvest Moon 3D, now with the noble Alpaca.

But this isn't about HM:ANB because due to I assume lack of faith in a game about farming and marrying, Nintendo only shipped 5 copies to the UK and the rest aren't arriving for another 4 days. So instead, as you do when you've been waiting to play a game and it doesn't arrive. You play the old one. Welcome to 2007's Harvest Moon DS

I hate a lot of games. I always
complete them, but I still power on through them with a rage in my
heart so deep and an urge in my fist to smash my controller into my
television that sometimes as I stare blankly and unsatisfied at the
rolling credits, watching with hate each progressive name of every
bastard that was involved in the piece of shit that wasted almost a
day of my precious one trip life; I wonder why I bothered.

But even so, no matter
how much hate there may be, I'll always try, as I think any
reasonable person would, to not just hate blindly. It doesn't really
achieve anything and while it can be funny when played for laughs,
overall it just makes you look like a whiny bitch who has no level of
criticism beyond “worst game evaaaaa”. No matter how bad the game
was, unless it had some glaring flaw that was of the utmost of
unforgivable, then I'll try to give it a reasoned personal score out
of ten that I can blurt out mindlessly to people once the memory of
the actual game has faded away.

Or else you could just go nuclear on a
game like a lot of the user reviews of Metacritic have chosen to do.
I've always known they were there, but only really noticed how
ludicrous and unfair a lot of them were when looking through the user
reviews for Tomb Raider, a game that on the whole I in no way liked
due to its dull story, one dimensional characters, boring level
design, low difficulty and repetitive combat. But aside from those
things I wouldn't say it was the worst game I ever played and nor was
it glitchy or frustrating from a technical standpoint. It was just
boring, stupid and didn't interest me, but it wasn't the worst game
I'd ever played. But apparently to some it was a disgusting hunk of
filth and an unforgivable sin that only personified the darkness that
lies and guides all bad men to commit evil unto this world. Plus it
had shitty shooting, which is something I can agree with.

So I decided to check out a few other
popular or critically acclaimed titles that had had a similar effect
on people and these are my findings.

Tuesday, 8 October 2013

Advertising is a hard
job. Unless you were one of the many twats at my secondary school
whose daddies were all in advertising, then it's a hard job to get
into and most of all, a hard job to keep. You're under an insane
amount of pressure to make people buy something by making them think
that they need your product, using only the tools of cheap gags or
sexy ladies, whose bodies you're not allowed to show by law. If sales
don't improve or your commercial causes any kind of wide spread
offence and damages the image of the company, then you're out and
some other arsehole who mistakenly believed that they're about to be
let into the creative inner circle, having not noticed the strict
guidelines painted in gruel on the constant beige walls surrounding
the box stamped with 'insert soul here'.

Thursday, 3 October 2013

So here is an article that should have been finished a week ago if it wasn't for Illness and University which have been knocking me for six on respective days now. But yes, enjoy, hopefully my content production should pick up now that I'm over "Freshers Flu", though boy did I cringe typing that.

It is a well known fact that here at What About Cynics we do very little in the field reporting, because frankly reporting on Aquaman and the 3DS rarely has that component short of visits to Comic Con. But aren't you in for a treat because last week I embarked on a four man mission to notorious Bristol (Bristol, United Kingdom) dogging spot, Tog Hill.

Monday, 30 September 2013

This is an article that I wrote for another website. I was promised by its owner that after a trial period of 3 articles, I would receive actual work and an account with them. As with most things, it turned out to be bullshit and I was subsequently ignored once he had received my trial pieces and then led me on that he was snowed under and would get back to me. Enough time has now passed that I no longer care and would like to label him a cunt and repost it here.

Enjoy. I won't give the name of the website here because it will only swell his views for his shitty website which is comprised of nothing more than paid for review articles of protein shakes and festivals, which has given his website a Google page rank of 0 because he's a greedy asshole.

Completely in opposition to the in depth journalism regarding things that we hate and angry masturbation that this website publishes.

The night after any party is never a pretty sight. Discarded bottles stand upright nervously in close herds awaiting their fated trip to the bin bag. Beer cans with a deceptively heavy amount of liquor lying hidden in the bottom, weighing the can down just enough to outdo any pressure that your grip can exert whilst picking up the can and send it hurtling back down to sticky up the already sticky floor. The stick is what must be dealt with first, for it is far spreading, all the way from the door to the sofa and onwards into the limits of your patience. It holds the discarded ash and cigarette filters of careless rollers and ignorant ash flickers, and as you follow its path, it only leads on to the continuing demise of your spirit as you go on to discover the treasures of the night which include an empty Wotsits packet and a discarded chicken bone form some late night chicken hut.

Sunday, 22 September 2013

Hello, sorry for the lack of poetry corner last week, it was supposed to be Jordevan Folk Tale number 1, but it eventually contained too many plot reveals for a book no-one will probably ever read. So have the 2nd lyrical folk tale produced for one of my many fictional worlds, which is significantly less spoilery. If only the widely accepted story of our creation was so succinct and passive. (Don't worry, Jordevan has its fair share of nuts religions) ((Next weeks poem: Clubbing!)) (((This weeks article: Dogging!)))

Jordevan: pronounced Yore Dah Varn

How did Jordevan come to be?

Asked the man, straight to the sky

Was there land, or always sea?

He was told the answer, but had to die

So we do not know
what came before,

Except the snow
and the boar.

The boar long gone, the snow kept at bay.
By the Evernorth wind, blowing night and day
only the sea, and shattered land remain.

Inability to conquer, their eternal shame

They say that magik raised the mountains
Spoken in tongues men no longer speak
and magik was gifted from the fountains.
From the gods, to the weak.

For somewhere there is a vast sea of land
Where every man has his own farm hand
We will never want, we will always sow
We will have this place when the right winds blow.

Friday, 20 September 2013

Haven't updated the website in a while
because like everyone else I have no creativity at the moment whilst
I splurge every second of my free time into ploughing through GTA V.
So far it's a damn good time. Fun, funny and doesn't feel as
repetitive as its more recent brethren have led us to believe it has
to. I still dislike you GTA IV. I'm sorry, but you were just boring.
I think this might also be a Vice City beater, which is a big thing
for me to say. It's kind of like a widow finding that she loves her
second husband more than the dead one who she had been idolising all
these passing years that she'd lost perspective. And that's me,
settling in with my new man and finding that he can make feel ways
and feelings that I'd never felt before, even with Tommy Vercetti's
fun times back in that whacky ass 1980s setting all those years ago.

There won't be a full GTA V review for the fact that it's good and I don't really like to review good things on the site, but instead criticise things that have been critically well received but that I hate, or just the worst shit in the world. So if it doesn't turn up in a full article review, then that'll be a good review from me.

So I took a little break from it to go
on Youtube and was immediately pissed off by the appearance of a slug
of annotations spread all across the screen. So I went to hit the
remove annotations button, the ultimate defence against lazy bastards
who can't be bothered to put all the information they wanted in the
video itself when they were making it, and so plumped it in post
production with corrections of spelling errors and recommendations to
friends channels. But there I found there was no remove annotations
button. That's right, from what I've heard, this seems to only be for
Chrome users, but we have luckily been gifted this latest update and
be the guinea pigs to a slightly more irritating Youtube.

Sunday, 15 September 2013

I
remember first noticing the absence of loading screens in games back
in 2001 with the release of the first Jak and Daxter. It promised a
completely open, uninterrupted free roaming platformer and that's
what it delivered. There were obvious hidden loading screens,
obscured by long walks through repetitive hallways, usually filled
with nothing more than a jump or two to keep you entertained. It was
one of the first of its kind to deliver on this loading technique and
was impressive for the time. A feat seemingly only then just possible
during the 6th
generation of consoles, now that the hardware had become competent
enough to continue the game as it loaded.

Jak
and Daxter however at least managed to load its levels fast and
although the load times were obvious, they weren't tedious to the
point of frustration. This was mainly due to the lack of revisiting
the same few levels and so every time you were forced to walk down a
boring hallway, at least it was a new boring hallway with different
textures on the walls to keep you entertained. But a lot of games
continued on in this vain and a lot of them have not accomplished it
so gracefully.

Thursday, 12 September 2013

This is just a quick one because although I only just played this, this
game has been out for ages and there isn't really much to say other
than just my basic point that I so subtly hinted at in the title. But
Jesus Sweet Jesus, do people really think that the 2013 Tomb Raider
reboot is well written? Because if that's so then fuck me in the face
with a jagged crocodile dick, everyone needs to really hold video
game writing up to a better standard than this. There aren't going
to be many spoilers here, because to be honest there's nothing really
to spoil. The story of this game is shit, the characters are shit and
basically nothing happens.

Tuesday, 10 September 2013

Has Aaron just gone mad and started to put all his fan fiction on the website? No actually, welcome to "Awesome stuff that was announced this week" or ASTWAF (continuing my war on acronyms for Internet segments that never go anywhere). Here are three cool things that have happened.

(Four days, four articles, what is going on?)

1. Macbeth announced, cast awesome.

He pissed? He pissed.

Sean Bean will play Macbeth, Charles Dance is Duncan, Ron Wealsey Rupert Grint is going to play Ross. If that doesn't spur you on then McDuff is being played by Nightcrawler's dad in X-men First class. I for one will watch that movie. The only question remaining is where is my awesome version of Hamlet.

Monday, 9 September 2013

Sorry it is late, one sentence took four times as long as the rest of the poem. Always the way. Also, no Harvey Spellcheck so please don't shoot me. Hope you enjoy it more than me. (bonus points if you guess Aaron's dodgy rhyme of the week)

In the world of constant things to do.
Infinite stimulation
The disconnect between me and you.
Through continuous simulation.

Why would I meet new people
with such pleasant social castration
when the mere act of being feels so regal
irrespective of location

Sunday, 8 September 2013

So last weekend I went
to the Cardiff Comic con with rest of the WAC group and a few tag
alongs. In all fairness to the title I gave this article, we did
actually go because it was the Cardiff version of Comic con and so
expected nothing less than a budget version of every other one being
held. However, what I found was a little less than budget, bordering
on the verge of the pointless, where I couldn't really work out what
the event was really even there for other than just a glorified flea
market.

Saturday, 7 September 2013

The life of a modern
assassin is a tough one. Better forensic science and more CCTV
surveillance than ever makes you average social stealth assassination
no longer the walk in the park that it was for our ancestors. But no
matter what obstacles you face, you'll always know that your most
useful assassination tool will always be there, snugly hugging to
your wrist. That's right, it's your old companion, the hidden blade gauntlet.
Except now it's the modern age, so it's flimsy, uncomfortable and
since now blades are illegal out in public, it's all made of the
finest plastic thirty pounds can buy.

Tuesday, 3 September 2013

(Once again Harvey was supposed to look over and post this, hence the 12 hour delay. Bon Appetite)

Hello everyone, we just got back from Comic Con, and while I forgot to bring my camera so there are no pictures (Except all of us got a picture on the Iron Throne that I will try and make people upload at some point). So yeah, it was really fun, there was some great costumes, some cool stars, got to see Brian Blessed, Anthony Head...Syrio Forel...The cast of Red Dwarf? Bought some cool stuff as well, like a Totoro keyring and a Death Note. The next one is in October. I'm looking forward to getting another 50 3DS spot-passes.
(Article writing resumes tomorrow. Look out for more podcasts as well) ((Forgive the terrible strain it was to rhyme everything with "con", I think I wore out that bit way too early, oh well, what better way than poems to be wax lyrical about your life)

It is a credit to Comic Con's everywhere that no-one tried to pop his balloons.

Monday, 2 September 2013

This is Early Jackson and he's going to
change your life and your idea of what words can constitute a first
name. He may just look like a regular man. He may even look like a
slightly sleazy man. A snake oil salesman of words and false hope. A
strange case of a man whose job description is to teach people how to
be successful and yet seems to have achieved no actual success
outside of the sphere of teaching people how to be successful.
Confusing I know, but I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable
explanation other than just preying on people's desperation. Anyway,
let's explore this some more.

Friday, 30 August 2013

Hello everyone. Here is a double whammy of conversational treats. First there's the usual and frankly getting kind of old, 'bi-whenever the hell we can all be online at the same time' Cynicast. Then, in a very similar format, but just different enough that we can pawn it off as something else, there's the podcast special we made about all things DC related. Enjoy our quickish chat about the Man of Steel sequel, complete with a mini discussion about whether or not Ben Affleck will be any good at Batman. Because you won't have heard anyone expressing their opinion on that before.

There's also some chat about the new Flash TV series and some complaining about numerous subjects, from the new Xbox controller all the way to the awkward set up of the upcoming Justice League movie. But you'll have to listen to both podcasts to find out which subject is in which video. Or you could use some basic deduction.

Either way enjoy them. If you really enjoy them, feel free to like and subscribe. Hell why not just like and subscribe for no reason, just to be different.

Thursday, 29 August 2013

It is said, and it is an opinion I frequently cite, that Studio Ghibli are the Pixar of Japan. While, as with most analogies there are glaring discrepancies, it is apt enough that I continue anyway. Because really, I don't think I could name two companies that so effortlessly make products that are simultaneously 1) Beautiful 2) Engaging 3) Smart and 4) For the whole family. I can think of nothing else that would be enjoyed by every echelon of my extended family.

Just within the selection pictured here we have everything from Crime Caper to WW2 fighter pilots, Newspaper slapstick and Norse Mythology.

Hayao Miyazaki, pictured above is the creative flair behind most of the films, save for a few produced by others, most notable Isao Takahata. Miyazaki's son Goro is directing the film I'll be writing about today, though he did write the screenplay for it. The film in question being "From Up on Poppy Hill", the first Ghibli film I've had the pleasure of seeing during the cinema release and not 4 years after on an anniversary screening.

Monday, 26 August 2013

Sorry for the delay, Harvey was supposed to check this but didn't, so I've just posted it. Bank Holiday Weekend still counts right?

Happy Bank Holiday people, though this one doesn't even have some lame pseudo-religious justification behind it, so just enjoy the day off. Or, if you are like me, enjoy another day off. One of those "Political Compass"-esque tests that will tell you where you stand in the political spectrum. Talk about redundant, but hey, doesn't mean I can't poke some fun at it. I'll post what my results said underneath, though just by reading the poem you'll get the jist of it.

Earlier today, a friend did suggest

That I take the Social Attitude Test

After a shrug and a sigh.
I comply.

Fifty questions later, we have my answer.
Apparently I think humanity is cancer

Friday, 23 August 2013

Now I really like Batman, almost as much as I like ripping off Kevin Smith podcast titles, so consequently I was waiting in anticipation for casting news about who would be playing the Caped Crusader in the Man of Steel sequel scheduled sometime in the next two years. Worryingly such names as Orlando Bloom, Ryan Gosling and Josh Brolin had been banded around and I especially thought that the Warner Bros machine had gone into meltdown trying to work out who could fill Bale's rubber boots.

And then last night on Twitter I saw a flurry of activity regarding Ben Affleck as Batman, something that had already been mentioned before anyone knew Man of Steel was going to be a fiscal hit, if not with the critics. My opinion? Yeah, sure. If you had asked me 5 years ago, probably not, but Argo, The Town, his brief appearance in Smoking Aces, he has pulled his act together to the "Good Will Hunting and Dogma" days. (Yes I think Dogma is a great film).

Thursday, 22 August 2013

Elysium, a film in which Matt Damon is essentially a giant
walking USB stick.

Elysium is the second film by Neill Blomkamp, the prodigious
director responsible for the universally applauded District 9.Much like D9, it is set in a future world where
the social apartheids of our time are put under a magnifying glass, but unlike
D9, it horribly degenerates into action-genre muscle-flexing, in yet another boot
to the head for the trampled, barely alive body of science fiction.

Now, of the three of us who run this site, I care about the News undeniably the most. If I'm not listening to it on my radio, then I'm reading it on my phone, on the computer, or Al Jazeera is running in the background on my TV. Unfortunately this one won't be a funny one, but hopefully for those who asked for it, it might inform.

As you probably realise if you frequent this website, I don't often write about the News, nor, as I'm specifically about to, the Middle East. Primarily, although not limited to the fact I am pro-something that many people of my generation are against. Currently I've decided to write this over talking about the latest Pokémon Anime or the new Studio Ghibli Film...Both would be infinitely easier.

Note: This originally started as the promised Syrian Civil War summary, but the situation in Egypt spiraled out of control much too rapidly for that to now be possible.

Sunday, 18 August 2013

We are going to try and be more light hearted today. After studying what is poetry and love, let us get down to something more pleasant, though no less important. Pop Culture, more specifically, the Nerd.

Thank you joethepeacock.com, I hope you don't mind me using your incredible jpeg.(I'll get around to dissecting Big Bang Theory one day, I promise)

Recently, I was called too attractive to be a Nerd.
I found the claim most absurd.
And not just the one of me, "attractive"
But why this should influence how I live.

Nerd is a label, Ill-defined at best
And yet I still wear it proud on my chest
So while that might reflect poorly
There is no better word to sum up me.

To me, being a Nerd is to have a passion for living
Stuff is interesting, whether Science or Gaming.
I can like Poetry one day, Science Fiction the next
Diligently research a book's proper context.

Why would I give that up because my appearance changed?
If I ever do, consider me deranged.
Why would I stop being interested in thingsFor we, the Nerds, truly are kings.

Friday, 16 August 2013

Update: Since writing we played another Official Team Game, and won. So undefeated thus far.As you might be aware if you read Harvey's snipes in the comment section, me and Simon have started playing a (totally healthy) amount of Dota 2, and as with many purely multiplayer experiences, there comes a point where you reach a certain skill threshold and you think.

"Boy we don't completely suck at this game"

And so consequently, after roughly 3 minutes of deliberation, planning, and hastily made jpegs I give you.

The What About Cynics League Dota 2 Team. WAC for short, Cynics in full. If you can't make it out, our Logo is the trusty "What About Cynics" set on murky blue. Me and Simon are on it, and if Harvey ever decides to actually play it, he is more than welcome. This screenshot is from the play of our first official WaC game, which I will now show you.

Tuesday, 13 August 2013

Sorry for my long gap of not posting or commenting, I've just added this to the front of the review in case anyone missed my response to the comments. Sorry if I'm being a bit soppy at the moment, that kind of mood, but really appreciate it. Now, onto Movie Reviewing!

Now You See Me is a film I wish had been utterly terrible. I could have made so many amazing jokes if it had been terrible. Such as the following.

Now You See Me: Wish I Hadn't!

Now You See Me: Nothing But Smoke And Mirrors

Now You See Me: Combine a bunch of Successful acting pairs into a sub-standard Louis Leterrier film.

And so on. But I actually enjoyed Now You See Me, something I wasn't really expecting due to the steady stream of average reviews I had heard from friends and critics alike. I mean it wasn't incredible, we aren't talking Nolan levels of film making, but I'd say NYSM breaches easily 7/10 and into 8/10. I guess now I just need to explain why. To the varied fonts!

1. Mark Ruffalo and Melanie Laurent

In a film about charismatic, talented, almost super-natural magicians performing a series of world-altering robberies across the Northern Hemisphere, the two actors and characters who really stood out to me in this was Mark Ruffalo and Melanie Laurent. Now both of them have impressed me previously, Laurent playing the incredible Shoshanna in Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds and Mark Ruffalo in both his obvious defining career booster as Marvel's Bruce Banner and also props for him in Shutter Island because he was in my opinion the only consistent performance within that movie.

But yes, they really went above and beyond here, I imagine they will win any award I invent for best chemistry, even with the sometimes minimal time together they are given. While the arc they underwent was slightly generic to start with, it was acted superbly and felt like the most grounded, realistic thing in an otherwise mad world.

(I also might be slightly in favour of the beautiful European falls for scruffy Anglo combination as Mark Ruffalo is probably the most beautiful 6/10 in Hollywood).

Monday, 12 August 2013

I never really understand how X Men
movies keep getting made. The first two films were surprisingly good superhero film, given the fact that they were made back
in the pre-Spiderman era where most licensed superhero films had been
pretty damn shabby for the last few decades. Most superhero movies
before this had really gone for all out spectacle, black vs white
morality and pretty repetitive origin stories centred around
cardboard, rice flavoured protagonists.

Obviously, that's just a blank
overview. There were a few good ones, but since a lot of people see
the world in shades of Dark Knight being the greatest superhero of
all time, an achievement on the scale of the Gardens of Babylon that
nothing can compete with, then why should I not be as dismissive and
sum up periods of cinema as swiftly and lazily as any other critic.

But I was a fan of the first two X Men
films. Hell, even the third one, although a lot stupider and louder
than the previous entries on account of its bigger budget and newer
(not at all) creative team; it wasn't a terrible attempt. I sat down and
watched it, enjoyed some of the action, but mourned a little that it
had taken some of the subtle, but at least present subtext within the
first two movies about society's incapability to adapt and accept
those who are different, instead simply breaking it down to injections and
Vinnie Jones yelling. In fact I miss David Hayter as lead writer of
the first two so much that I refuse to even call the third X Men team
a creative team. They're not creative and there was so little
consistency in that film, it shows no teamwork took place. They were
just a bunch of blokes. Dead head blokes who managed to kiss enough
ass to make an X Men film.

Things can't last forever. And unless
we're talking about a baby goat getting kicked to death by a
fireman's boot or the flogging of PEWDIEPIE then that's a sad fact
about life. However, some people don't like to see things end,
especially when said things ending is there sense of popularity.

So I offer up to you the Facebook
groups that their creators just couldn't let die. At one point long
ago when a new film or television show came out, one person maybe
noticed something slightly interesting or took a little niche of pop
culture from it and drew attention to it by making a Facebook group
page for everyone to come and like and enjoy. But things don't last
forever, and after a while, the like rate and visitation to the page
began to slow until it became just another ignored page on Facebook.
No new updates and lack of relevance meant that it stayed away from
the feed and starved a silent death, leaving an epitaph in its
followers' likes list that at one point it was given a shit about.

Sunday, 4 August 2013

This was actually entirely formulated inside my head yesterday afternoon(now four days ago afternoon), I rarely come up with poems so completely in my head, but I had every rhyme of this one laid about before I indulged a keystroke. I suppose consequently it may suffer for it. You can be the judge of that.

(New Doctor Who is being announced tonight, so prepare for a sardonic article about that later on)